How Russia Got the Ukraine War Wrong
"In August 1991, President George Bush delivered the most infamous address of his one-term presidency. Speaking to the legislature of Ukraine, then still part of the Soviet Union, Bush expressed concerns about the country’s potential push for complete sovereignty. “Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism,” he said. “They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”
Bush’s speech has gotten an unfairly bad rap. His administration reasonably feared that the USSR’s disintegration would mimic Yugoslavia’s descent into devastating ethnic conflicts but with the added catastrophic danger of nuclear weapons. The relatively peaceful demise of the Soviet Union looks inevitable only with hindsight’s benefit; the process could have been much bloodier, as the current Russo-Ukrainian war demonstrates.
The address is striking now for its suggestion that Ukrainian independence would be an act of self-destruction, however. Russia’s invasion in early 2022 showed that Ukrainian nationalism was more powerful, cohesive, and widely shared than anyone knew. Before the war, few would have predicted that this small, newly independent, ethnically and linguistically divided country led by a former comedian would successfully resist the former empire boasting the world’s largest nuclear weapons arsenal."
